


one of these nights

by MiniInfinity



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Angst, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, shelter!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-25 16:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10768173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniInfinity/pseuds/MiniInfinity
Summary: Soonyoung builds lonely worlds with the tablet in his hands.based off of the music video of Shelter by Porter Robinson and Madeon





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a warning here: there are a couple of mentions of suicide  
> [Alessa](https://lessonata.tumblr.com/) is so amazing, she blessed the world again with [her art](https://lessonata.tumblr.com/post/168883314015/one-of-these-nights-by-miniinfinity) for this fic and created a playlist to listen to while reading it! she made even more for this fic, but i linked them in the chapters the art corresponds with!

The mattress relaxes under dry fingertips as he shifts beneath the sheets and welcomes sunlight seeping into closed eyelids. He drags a long exhale and rubs his eyes, sitting up on the bed and letting his blanket ride down his stomach.

He looks out to the clear walls, tilting his head back up to trees glaring down at him. Bark climbing up to reach for the skies but green leaves touching clouds closer. Sacrifices of branches left at the foliage below heights and nearby his arms. A black tint of a bird shoots across the sky, between one swaying branch and the next, and Soonyoung wonders when exactly he drew that bird. His decisions level off whether or not he should add in some rain to listen to pitter-patters vibrating on the flat ceiling when another idea arises.

His hands crawl for the tablet somewhere on his bed and his fingerprints pave ways to the pile of pillows on his side of the bed against the wall. Cool metal meets his hand like a warm greeting and the stylus follows right after.

_No messages in 2598 days_

_What should I draw this time?_ is a question he throws hanging in the air every day, through a tight grip of the stylus in his fingertips and strong, anxious hold of the tablet on his lap. The end of the stylus hovers over the eraser button, quickly knocking down trepidation and sending the pen closer to the screen the further down his mind goes into imagining a new world.

Trees collapse down into waterfalls of gray, earth of his surroundings melting into liquid browns before solidifying into monochrome. Black tints explode into nothing and it takes an awful screech scratching into his ears to realize that it’s the bird he saw from what feels like decades ago. Clouds snap into blocks before dissipating and crashing down in a humming silence.

Soonyoung simply sighs as everything starts building from the bottom up through careful strokes of his hands over the tablet–tints of blue bleeding onto surfaces besides the cube of his room but never through it, chromatic floats of fishes, splashes of water hitting against transparent walls. He points the stylus over the duplicate button, dotting the screen at the lake and letting fish multiply behind his headboard and next to his pillows. He circles the only square on his screen, flashing a calming red and bright blue, and drags it higher on the pixel canvas.

Under his toes, fishes become wandering microscopic blacks against the blue, not really knowing where they’re going and why they’re there. He pulls his blanket off and sits at the edge of his bed, feet dangling above coaxing waters through barriers of the floor.

He paints a boulder right under the cube and he stops himself from bringing his cube right through the rock.

0000

_No messages in 2598 days_

He doesn’t stop himself from pressing the eraser button the next morning, letting all lakes and streams evaporate into grays and whites below his toes, staring blankly and specks of fishes breaking apart so easily. The boulder right below him melts into gray smoke like burning grass.

Nothing wrings his heart heavy and numb as he continually taps his stylus at the eraser button, not even after everything around him is a blaring white.

It’s at that moment, when everything above him doesn’t change a single shade in color, that he notices he didn’t even draw a sky.

1111

_No messages in 2599 days_

He fiddles with the tablet the next day, twirling the pen between bored digits. He stares at the desolation in every centimeter around him that isn’t in his cube, pondering what he should construct next.

He picks up his stylus and washes the entire screen with black, except for the gradual fade of red to blue and red again of his cube still alive in the pixels. Black crawls into white space above like ocean waves, trails of gray clouds drifting merely seconds behind. He blinks once, twice to get his eyes adjusted to the new oblivion above.

Once he’s done, he lies back down with arms folded under his head, at the moon above and ringlets of light. Not a single star to comfort the moon. His heart lulls in his chest, serene and smooth.

2222

Soonyoung swears he didn’t press the eraser button before he fell asleep. It’s a routine to lock his tablet so that not even his own handprint on the screen will stir the device awake and ready to create his lonesome surroundings before he does.

Outside of his four walls, there’s a room much more complicated, more lively, more organized than his own cube. With more blankets and pillows on the unoccupied bed, way too many for a single person to use. Light tumbles through parted curtains of a window and falls right onto a bookshelf, oozing hardcovers and paperbacks behind small trinkets. Soonyoung steps closer in his cube and reads the titles, characters decipherable to his own eyes and brain. Some words pluck at his memory, tease him that this could be something that he has drawn for himself before.

It’s when he hears another voice in the distance, not in the room, that he knows he definitely did not draw this before. He couldn’t have. He can’t draw voices.

Someone walks in after a lazy creak of the door, door stopper banging against the wall once before that person walks in. It’s all bare, languid steps towards the bed, early-morning digits carding knuckle-deep through unstyled hair, a sudden kick at Soonyoung’s guts that this isn’t the first time he has seen this person.

“Soonyoung,” the person calls and their voice reaches somewhere into the depths of Soonyoung’s memory, but the grasp is barely fingertips away. A missing sound in between the first and last part of his name because this person’s voice is still shaking sleep off of their throat.

“Seokmin,” Soonyoung hears his own voice off in the distance.

“Let’s go back to sleep,” the person smiles before falling on the mattress, hugging the pile of pillows closer to his chest and ruining the fixed bed in a way that urges Soonyoung to leap out and mess up the covers even more.

Soonyoung watches himself walk in with a plate in his hands, stacks of eggs in random shapes scattered across porcelain. His hair is even messier than the person’s, strands standing at many angles. “I just made breakfast, though.”

Soonyoung swears he didn’t press the eraser button as everything falls apart without the tablet in his hand, without him robbing the chance to put pieces of different puzzles together. His fists bang on the transparent walls for everything to stop and for once, for everything to stay the way they are, to not draw a single change. His screaming to bring everything back doesn’t burn at his ears as it used to. He believes he has gotten used to it, but he doesn’t know when the last times his throat ached this bad, his voice wrecked so broken and quiet for something yearns for but doesn’t know why.

3333

He lies in bed with fluttering eyes that night. In fact, his eyes never leave the tablet at all that night and the night after.

The tablet lights up every few seconds when he attempts to go back to his drawing history, to manifest whatever he saw that day. He wonders why the undo button decides to malfunction now, when Soonyoung never wanted to go back until now.

_No messages in 2603 days_

4444

Soonyoung tried drawing a human once. Allowed his stylus to draw anything that resembles himself or someone that tugs his memories in harsh pulls, nearly rope-snapping heaves that leave him breathless. It never breaks the right ropes, though.

A person.

Someone with flesh and bones like him. Maybe a little taller than him. With a gentle smile that Soonyoung hoped had welcomed him to somewhere in the past. Remnants of sunlight at pure eyes when the person looked up at the sun that Soonyoung drew specifically for them. Maybe it’s because when people say that humans are made from the stars, the person is actually made out of the sun.

But when Soonyoung proffered a conversation with that person, held out a hand to hold for the first time in a long time, he froze as his creation dissolved into something more like sand, something far off from a human. His fingers hung in lonely space, dust collecting under his nails and into creases of his trembling palms. He didn’t even wipe off the irritating dust lingering at his eyes.

That was the first and last time Soonyoung sketches his last escapes of isolation.

5555

_No messages in 2613 days_

Soonyoung composes himself in a busy whim of a cityscape, stuck in the center of traffic where no one drives to nowhere. He lets cars run by themselves, gas pedals jammed at sporadic times without restriction, without purpose of reaching a certain destination. Night lights switch on in holes of skyscrapers, helping guide blind eyes of vacancy in stranded darkness.

He draws a crooked opening at the opposite wall of his bed, a sorry excuse for a door if there was anyone else around to care about it, and steps right through. His eyes start to burn at the ghost of a life in the back of his mind, a wish for his past that he never knew, of a future he yearns to settle for, of the present he wants to know why and how.

He strides down the sidewalk barefooted, tablet and stylus tucked in his palms and swaying at his side. Cold concrete and pecks of stones meet at his feet along the way as he squints to read flashing neon signs perched at buildings. No matter how close to his face the details of advertisements are, no matter how big the names of stores and buildings blink, he can’t understand a single word. Every single letter blurs at his vision, some distortion of print playing with his brain.

He thinks perhaps that it’s because he never named the places, papers, signs himself. Perhaps he can’t think of any names at all, besides his own.

6666

_No messages in 2624 days_

It takes a while before Soonyoung can pick up the stylus to control his surroundings again. He sketches a flame kindling under floors of his cube, tips of wavering red prying closer to his toes but never close enough. He circles the cube in his tablet and brings it up higher on the canvas as the fire grows taller.

Blazes engulf the molten ground from below, seeps of deadly red breaking through the cracks, and a part of Soonyoung wants to draw another door and run out.

7777

_No messages in 2624 days_

Soonyoung’s chest caves in while he tries drawing a door into the sadistic illusion at the other side of his walls, tears blurring his periphery and dropping right onto the screen when the tablet on his shaking lap doesn’t cooperate with the pen in his hand.

Each motion of the pen for an open door forces Soonyoung to watch the person hold a slumbering Soonyoung in their arms. Everything feels so, so real outside that Soonyoung wonders if this is how he lived his life before being trapped in here, wherever here is. He doesn’t know if it’s the person’s tears or his tears sending both of them crying, but the person whispers something into Soonyoung’s ears, deaf into his own.

The person’s voice is a mess of syllables and unclear as they shudder a slight and lift a long kiss onto Soonyoung’s forehead. The person slowly slips out of the bed, not wanting to leave, mattress already looking too big with only Soonyoung’s body on it. The person heads for the door and turns around to look at Soonyoung before leaving.

A throat-scratching scream boils through clenched teeth as he presses the stylus harder onto the tablet, trying to build that door into the life outside. He just wants to vanish from the lonely box he lives in, wants to make the person cease at their steps and return to him, whoever they are.

He holds the edges of the tablet in his hands and nearly snaps it in two, until his hands hurt just from feeling the metal and reminding himself that he doesn’t know what will happen if he does break it.

But which one will break first: the reality he lives in or himself?

He doesn’t want to know, but something tells him to give it a try.

8888

Soonyoung lives in a word of white, pressing his eyes shut to the black but occasionally giving way to hope that one day, the person will come back to the Soonyoung outside for the Soonyoung inside.


	2. Chapter 2

9999

_No messages in 2671 days_

Soonyoung wakes up to a punch at the corners of his head and his eyelids stinging to open. The pallid flares at him and he’s already gotten used to not reaching for his tablet the moment he wakes up. He fists his pillows and sheets until they almost rip under his nails because he can’t remember the name. The single name, besides his own. He can’t remember it, even if he tries picturing his voice saying it.

He can’t remember the person’s face, either. A whiplash of memory that makes him forget everything he needs and remember nothing he wants.

His bed never felt so lonely until now. He doesn’t stop himself from crying.

_No messages in 2671 days_

He draws himself more pillows on the mattress. Because maybe his bed won’t be so lonely. Because that’s what he recalls. He takes the color of flesh, maybe shades tanner than himself, and spreads it across the screen before narrowing it down to a shape of a body.

The biggest smile he can draw on such a small canvas.

Everything is so, so close to perfect.

The weight of his heart sinks to the bottom of his ribcage when he reaches out to slender digits, only to be pushed away by a betraying sneer of air.

1010

The tablet snaps under Soonyoung’s hands too easily for him to register it breaking, wires spitting orange sparks of electricity, fuels of Soonyoung’s home. White expanses glitch into technicolor, shards of his home shooting down on him like rain, but he doesn’t feel a thing.

1111

A sharp inhale buries into his throat, one that collects dust too quickly and scalds the back of his mouth, and he’s sitting up, coughing, head craned low and his chin almost touching the center of his bare chest. His hand rests on something soft, more plush than the cushions and sheets on the bed at his cube. Faint, gentle frays soothing his hard palm to undisturbed slumber. Cold strings glide on the skin of his arms like thin water, goosebumps startling across flesh.

It’s dark outside, except for the lights dripping through the curtain of his bangs, bands of hair caught together through what he thinks is sweat. He lifts his head a centimeter at a time, a rusty ache at his neck and his spine when he tries to move, and red flashes at his eyes from the screen in front of him before he even fully opens his eyes.

It’s not his familiar cube that he wakes into, none of the clear walls that welcome him into the white. Neon blue words and squares march his vision in cut-throat precision, one line spiking up and down, sharp corners gradually forming faster as he looks around. The words are frantic, running away from him, wanting to never be read by him, but more keep chasing for a way out of his sight as he holds time to take everything in. He makes out the word _AWAKE_ plastered in front of the blue. A line connecting from one side of the box to another, one starting point to a destination.

Beyond the cerulean, it’s white ants wandering into black water, sometimes red spheres tailed by a streak of yellow. Bigger orbs drifting by as he’s pulled away in his seat. Some are dark brown, burnt, littered with crevices of hard-hits and bare-misses.

He straightens up in his seat, ignoring the jags digging into his back and painful stretches of skin on his limbs.

There’s a picture on what he assumes is a dashboard, propped under the screens. Someone has their face pressed against Soonyoung’s cheek in a smile that he thinks would be too happy to exist, too easily given to someone like Soonyoung. Wrinkles carving at the corner of their eyes and Soonyoung almost doesn’t recognize his own smile.

Seokmin is the first name he thinks of when he glances back at the metal frame, even after tears start blurring the picture.

_One (1) new message_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a warning here: there's a mention of suicide  
> here is some [more wonderful art](https://lessonata.tumblr.com/post/168884228245/one-of-these-nights-by-miniinfinity) for this fic by [Alessa](https://lessonata.tumblr.com/)! it's related to the middle of this chapter :D

1212

 

_One (1) new message_

_Received 3 hours ago_  
  
Text and numbers float against the black, blinding him and leaving him even more lost than before. On the screen, a number counts up and the digits lining across his vision stretches so long that he thinks it's been a while since he has seen a number that big.  
  
When he looks down at his arms on his lap, bumps start to rise down his skin, between the colorful wires sinking across flesh, and his body trembles, periphery unsteady. It starts with his arms, then his legs bounce, knees almost bumping into each other. His fingers try to curl into fists, but he just can't. When he tries to breathe, each inhale weakens and his lungs burn from the cold air.  
  
He shuts his eyes for a couple of seconds once, twice in useless attempts to clear his vision and read the words, graphs, pictures standing in front of him, but all he registers is the flashing _AWAKE_ stinging his eyes and the back of his head.  
  
Words smear in his eyes and he can't tell if it's his own eyes failing on him or the actual screen trying to stop him from reading everything laid out.  
  
1313  
  
_One (1) new message_  
_Received 1 day ago_  
  
Soonyoung regrets opening his eyes because the white grazes too harshly and all at once. His hands rake through the sheets and pillows on his bed, reaching for the tablet at the foot of his bed, but his hands falter on the way when fingertips brush freezing, metal edges.  
  
_What did I need this for?_  
  
He takes the tablet back in his palm again and draws another blanket, closes his eyes and sighs into the new covers.  
  
1414  
  
_One (1) new message_  
_Received 2 days ago_  
  
Soonyoung leans his back against the headboard of the bed, tapping the stylus on the corners of his tablet on his lap and mumbling _What to draw? What to draw this time?_ He lets his hand draw two small, connecting curves on the screen and his eyes trail a black bird stark across the white sky.  
  
In between clicks of his stylus hitting the tablet, he wonders if there was a day between today and the last time he used this tablet, if it has really been so long since the end of the stylus graced the canvases. Or perhaps there were many days between today and the last that he can't remember at all.  
  
His eyes leave the bird and fall back on the tablet and it's not the curves on an otherwise blank digital canvas that greets him. Straight lines waterfall down the white at his palms, but when he looks up, it's apartment buildings surrounding a playground and a desolate pathway of trees under the arms of night sky welcoming awake souls. The apartment building hurts deep into his chest, punches the fragile air right out of his system, but he keeps his head up.  
  
At the other side of the wall, he finds himself walking with someone slightly taller than him, hands linked and swinging in the heart-fluttering space besides their hips. The lobby void of any other residents, Soonyoung assumes the hands of the clock are smoothing the right side.  
  
The person talks with their hands, gesturing it off to one way before swiping a palm flat across the air, at an invisible scenery built up by the person's persuasive words. Soonyoung watches himself listening, staring at the ground, letting the person guide the way, nodding slowly at every pause of the person's voice. But Soonyoung inside the cube shuts his eyes tight, lets his ears focus on the words, but the person's voice bends at all the wrong places, morphs into speech that Soonyoung can't decipher even if he shoves his ear against the wall.  
  
He takes his tablet and stylus, draws a door to lead him outside and to follow the couple and listen along, but the wall doesn't give in. He sketches four squares with a latch in the middle. Curtains cascade at the edges and when he walks up to the window to swing it open, he fumbles for the latch. He looks at the corners, edges, under one square and the next, but the latch remains lost in the pixels.  
  
A single step in front of the elevator and Soonyoung's thumb finding the button, all colors dissipate, broken shards of reality evaporating into the sky of Soonyoung's white, lonely one. It takes the plants in the hallway at first, then the couches and windows, tiled floors and modern paintings on drab walls, the couple's steps into the elevator bringing them to somewhere that Soonyoung dreads he should know.  
  
1515  
  
_One (1) new message_  
_Received 4 days ago_  
  
Yellow uniform shirts and navy blue neck ties run through empty hallways, black sneakers squeaking into their ears and trailing behind smiles. He doesn't know which room they stop at, but the two slow their tracks at a classroom near the end of the hallway, door slid open all the way so that light tumbles onto their backs and refracts off their eyes when they turn around.  
  
Soonyoung and the person are holding hands, but after a second and third glance, they're not entirely holding hands. Soonyoung's forefinger hooks on a slender forefinger and middle finger of the person, staring down at their hands swinging in the silence.  
  
The person mutters something about Soonyoung's graduation approaching closer that they thought, but Soonyoung shakes his head, shushes them, assures them that they will see each other again after his graduation and a year later, after the person's graduation.  
  
The person barely lifts a corner of their lips and it pulls Soonyoung's chest, something caught running through familiarity and longing, under trying to figure out if this was once a reality or maybe not at all.  
  
The person lowers their head a slight, a quick press of their lips on Soonyoung's that even left Soonyoung himself trying hard to breathe again.  
  
1616  
  
_One (1) new message_  
_Received 8 days ago_  
  
The bedroom doesn't bleed off the soothing sunlight it once had, a bare bookshelf that lost all words of a happy life, none of morning's disheveled strands, nothing like the last time Soonyoung haunted it. The mattress lies naked, sheets barely hanging off the edges and pillows slumping on the floor. Moonlight stirs from parted curtains, landing a bright and icy band on Soonyoung's face. Sobbing is all he ears as his eyes adjust to the darkness.  
  
A taller person presses their palms softly on Soonyoung's cheeks, eyes never flitting away from him and Soonyoung notices the quick movements of eyes that the person tries to hold onto the image of Soonyoung longer than they're allowed to hold onto Soonyoung. Soonyoung catches the tears in his eyes and he's sobbing under uncertain hands and stumbling whispers.  
  
The person starts to whisper and it's as if they're right at Soonyoung's ears, telling everything next to him in his cube. "I will wait for you. Don't worry about me, Soonyoung, okay? Because after all of this, we'll see each other again. I don't know when, but we will."  
  
Soonyoung's grip on the tablet might send the device snapping again, so he drops it on his mattress, steps up to the wall, and lifts his palms on transparent barriers. His knees nearly give in when the person presses their lips hard on Soonyoung's and hesitates a moment to close their eyes. The person tilts their head to the side and their lips part for each other, strokes painful teases of warmth at his own lips. The unspoken pleads of _stay_ , but _we have to go_ through the person's lips on Soonyoung's and his fingers hanging tight onto their shirt like it's the only thing that will make time stop and hold them like this.  
  
Soonyoung pulls away and shifts his head down, lets his forehead lean against the person's chin. His jaws work trepidation, fear up and down, searching for the right thing to say. The person brings a palm on the side of Soonyoung’s neck, thumb of their other hand painting tears on Soonyoung’s cheek. Instead of words, when he doesn't know what to say, when there's too much to spill but he just can't decide what to fill off the brim first, Soonyoung's eyes fixate at their chest, gaze lost on the steady rise and shaky lows of their chest because he doesn't know when the next time he will be able to see this.  
  
"We'll meet again," is a promise Soonyoung himself he thinks is thrown out of the world. "We'll be happy and the world will be better. We'll be okay."  
  
1717  
  
_One (1) new message_  
_Received 11 days ago_  
  
Soonyoung's chest burns the next time he wakes up, and the fire sets off even more when the person and Soonyoung walk across a bridge during a crack of nightfall, smudged white streaks of headlights breaking into the dark and occasional chatter passing by the two. They stop their feet when they're near the center of the bridge, the junction where the bridge can collapse the easiest and Soonyoung’s thoughts collide.  
  
It's the wind that speaks to them at this moment, and a dead weight swings between the two. The river under them streams for the night sky, but it's none of the stars he once sketched for himself that he sees down below. The tension crushes Soonyoung; he doesn't even know why it's there in the first place.  
  
Soonyoung frees the mute with a dragging sigh, leans against the railing at his chest, and wonders aloud if the world will be okay, doubts if he'll see the same sky when they come back.  
  
The person suggests jumping off the bridge, with eyes caught for down below, eyelids inflamed and whites glossing into pinks. "I mean, we'll see the same sky on the way down."  
  
Soonyoung shakes his head and takes the person's hand, pulls them away from the bridge.  
  
1818  
  
_One (1) new message_  
_Received 13 days ago_  
  
The mattress, at least from what Soonyoung believes, has all of its sheets and pillows in the usual places this time. Soonyoung sleeps with light snores fading into the walls and a hand clinging loosely onto the hem of the person's shirt. Soonyoung doesn't stop himself from laughing--how many times has his hands traveled to the person's clothes for reassurance? But does it really help him? The person lies right beside him, but their back turns to Soonyoung. The person scrolls up and down their own tablet, eyes numb to the bright screen.  
  
Soonyoung picks up his own tablet for the first time and, despite his past attempts still haunting him, draws a door for his cube. The door swings right open without the chance of him drawing a doorknob and he steps outside into the bedroom. He hovers over his sleeping figure and over his shoulder, straight for the tablet.  
  
_24 Hours: The World's Fastest Outlet for News_  
  
Soonyoung assumes, before he even left through the door, that the person is reading long, winding articles or even a novel. But all Soonyoung catches are article titles, bold and harsh against his eyes.  
  
_First hit of asteroid waves: Calais, France; one 1.2km wide asteroid killing 2,682 and counting_  
  
_Second hit of asteroid waves: Talgar, Kazakhstan; 14m wide killing 37 and counting; fragments continue to fall from the sky_  
  
_Third hit of asteroid waves: 280m wide asteroid expected to strike Minbu,  Myanmar; evacuation centers open for the next 72 hours_  
  
Soonyoung almost reaches a hand out to wipe the tears in the person's eyes, to run slow circles on their back in hopes of palliating the muffled cries under the tight grip of their jacket.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last of [Alessa's](https://lessonata.tumblr.com/) ~~heart-crushing~~ [beautiful art](https://lessonata.tumblr.com/post/168884323785/one-of-these-nights-by-miniinfinity) for the last chapter (and bits of the third chapter, too)!

1919  
  
_One (1) new message_  
_Received 16 days ago_  
  
The abandoned warehouse the person brought Soonyoung to has a single light bulb swinging from several meters above their head, houses a small black rocket at the very back, right under the only light source. What he assumes is the front, by the single cushioned seat facing them, is left open for the person to dig their hands into, for finishing touches.  
  
"It's almost done," the person says as the two step over a tablet on the floor. "It should be finished on time."  
  
Soonyoung scans the entire place, the long lines of shelves in sharp precision, flattened and ripped cardboard boxes scattered, glass of smashed light bulbs littering in the middle of aisles and even around his feet. "Why is there only one here?" Soonyoung asks, tugging at the person's hand. "Why's there only one seat?" He takes both hands in his own and his voice barely leaves as a whisper. "Seokmin, this one has to be for you."  
  
Soonyoung himself pleads that this person has one for themselves, too. Somewhere else, maybe hidden from this warehouse or his sight.  
  
The person smiles, runs a thumb on the back of Soonyoung's hand, and assures him, "There's one for me in another warehouse. I just need more help with it because I want to add more. I want maps, countdowns, even, temperatures. I don't know, I just want to make mine have a little more."  
  
Soonyoung relaxes into his bed, inside his cube and far away.  
  
2020  
  
_One (1) new message_  
_Received 20 days ago_  
  
The warehouse echoes the person's footsteps and the whirring of the ship, almost as if they're not alone. This rocket is not alone.  
  
Soonyoung decides that this time, he opens up a door in his cube and trails behind the person's every steps. He doesn't dodge the glass at his feet, letting his flesh sink right into picks and sharps of cracked shards that his mind is numb to. The person kneels in front of the ship and Soonyoung crouches, rubs the backs of his hand over his eyes to fully take in his sleeping figure sitting inside the rocket.  
  
Inside the black metal contraption, he breathes heavily under wires and tubes poking into his arms and spine. He's slumping forward a little, arms swinging besides his lap a few millimeters at a time. A picture nestled at the side of the ship, a metal frame capturing a smile he thinks would be too happy to exist, if only he never saw it. His hair barely stops at his forehead and Soonyoung cards his hand through his own fringe, questions how long his hair has been growing if this was some reality he can't place a finger of memory on. His eye bags run deep and dark, even darker under the dim rocket; maybe Soonyoung couldn't sleep before this. His eyebrows pinched together, it's not the serene look that sleep cursed on Soonyoung when he held onto the person's shirt in his sleep.  
  
The person lets a tear fall from their cheek, dripping down to Soonyoung's bare thigh, when they brush a hand over Soonyoung's face, features finally giving into the touch and letting his scowl go. They lean forward, an innocent press of lips for as long as he can. Soonyoung still doesn't stir in his sleep.  
  
The proximity offers a better scan of the two. The scratches on the person's slender digits. The scar under Soonyoung's eye that the person can't avoid when they caress his face. How the sight of Soonyoung's bare chest makes breathing seem so troubling.  
  
The person stands up with the tablet in their hand and Soonyoung steps back, fumbling with his feet when he tries to regain his balance. They scroll a little down the screen before landing on one title that sends Soonyoung's heart to the pit of his stomach.  
  
_Asteroid Warning: First wave in Korea to hit Busan, spanning down to Jeju_  
  
_Second wave expected to hit Yongin in 42 hours; evacuation centers to close in 17 hours_  
  
2121  
  
_One (1) new message_  
_Received 21 days ago_  
  
The sky mourns gray, white lines bleak and glowing sharp contours of the person's face. A black dot ascends the sky and Soonyoung thinks that's what the person's eyes are trying to follow.  
  
Soonyoung looks up at the sky the moment everything starts to resemble more like the white sky of his cube. Something falls from the sky, streaks of fire that ignites the sky more than the stars ever could, only because the stars can never get this close.  
  
Soonyoung screams for the person to go back, arms out to push the person and hopefully their steps, to head back to the warehouse for their own ship. He runs up to the person, but it's the clear wall that he pushes instead.  
  
A tear slips from the person's jaw, but they don't sob, not like Soonyoung.  
  
2222  
  
_One (1) new message_  
_Received 23 days ago_  
  
Soonyoung,  
  
_I'm sorry for making you wait for so long. We need to wait a little longer. I don't know for how long, but we have to._  
  
_I still love you all the same._  
  
_I'll be waiting for you, too._  
  
_Seokmin_  
  
Soonyoung embraces the tablet hard into his chest that the metal surface digs imprints through his shirt and a sends a shiver across his body. He whispers apologies for breaking the tablet in the first place, his voice scratches out his throat that this Seokmin spent so much of his time making this tablet and he feel so selfish and careless just to break it so easily.  
  
After reading the message another three, four times, he breathes hard, almost shakes against each exhale, and strokes the tablet. He promises, at the pixel letters below his eyes and the name _Seokmin_ at the very end of the message, that he will wait for Seokmin, too. Because he believes that he and Seokmin will meet again.  
  
For now, he will wait. For now, he will stay in the shelter Seokmin built for him.  
  
_No messages in 23 days_

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [Porter Robinson & Madeon - Shelter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzQ6gRAEoy0)
> 
> i hope it makes sense. idk why i’m so worried about that. me poor heart for soonyoung :’c and i hope no one minds the way i separated each section bc it made sense to me that way ???
> 
> it's my first time posting here, so i hope i'm doing this right? i also posted this on my tumblr c:
> 
> the title is from Red Velvet's song [One of These Nights](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xWiro_tS1k)
> 
> i never thought i'd finish this, at least not this fast lmao so sorry if it's not as...idk good as the other parts?
> 
> so...my original intention for this fic was just to have two parts + some epilogue, which i posted on my tumblr...so now there's like two versions of this fic and i never thought of it until now...so have fun?


End file.
